Music and more with claudecat17 (aka Chris Davlin)!

It’s been too long between tune postings, and I just did a piece on Mary Lou Williams. Any math whiz will tell you that means it’s an easy choice for this one! First you could read the piece, but it’s not mandatory, just recommended. She was an amazing individual beyond her prodigious musical talents, and deserves to be better remembered, like many women in jazz or any other pursuit. It’s changed a little but not enough.

Anyway in that piece I mention one of the many aggregations she was involved with. This “Girl Stars” thing must have gotten some attention at the time, though I’ve never read of that specifically. It seems to have been an all female band, and there were several of those over the years, rarely rising above novelty status. One guy, Phil Spitalny, made a big name for himself by putting together one of the better publicized ones, with his name dropped a few times on my favorite old time radio comedy, the Phil Harris/Alice Faye show. Only the women were totally ignored, and dressed revealingly no doubt.

Mary Lou Williams did it very seriously though, at least if you judge the recordings on a musical basis. It’s very very strong material, played beautifully, with nobody clamming it up (no mistakes! clams are bad notes – a fact learned from the infamous Buddy Rich bus tapes, not an unfortunate turn of phrase given the topic at hand). I doubt it sold well.

I’m especially impressed by the guitar player on these tracks, Mary Osborne, a name I’d read and probably gotten her confused with Les Paul’s wife and recording partner Mary Ford, also a sneaky great guitar player. There was a woman named Mary Kaye too that played guitar, even had her own signature model at one time, a Fender! I’ll have to write about her at some point. Haven’t heard her yet but she’s fascinating, with a background in Hawaiian music via her dad even though they lived in Detroit! I think she played Vegas a lot…

So have a listen to some state of the art jazz from one of the best years for music ever, 1947. The year before the Cleveland Indians won the World Series with a bunch of cast offs and aging veterans, including not one but two players of African descent! Larry Doby and Satchel Page both got to experience Series home games that shattered attendance records, with over 80,000 happy Tribe fans loving every second. Everyone’s heard of Jackie Robinson though, so no need to do more. Racism solved, right?

Here’s one of the best ones of the several tunes Mary Lou Williams and her Girl Stars recorded for the very mainstream RCA label, the one that stole Elvis a decade later. It coulda been way different had he stayed with Sun, but he’d have been snapped up by another evil corporation soon anyway. Few businesses as flat out sleazy and mobbed up as the music biz. It’s All-American!

Enjoy! Or at least listen!